


Forever on the drawing board plot

by noctiscorvus



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Just ideas that'll never go anywhere beyond here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:21:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noctiscorvus/pseuds/noctiscorvus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically I often get these ideas that are really awesome, but I'll never write.<br/>I'd hate to lose them and I kind of want people to know about them, because they're awesome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever on the drawing board plot

**Author's Note:**

> There’s this post going around that says “And if you know nothing of Athena, know this…her champions would _die a thousand times to save but_ one _mortal life_ ”
> 
> And then I wondered; What if there was one champion that doesn’t.

She fell in love with a mortal prince and he was everything to her, but he didn’t like that she went away on quests all the time, so she comes back and finds he’s cheated on her.  
And then war breaks out and she still fights for the kingdom because it’s her home.  
But then on the battlefield, the prince is about to be killed by a Titan and she could stop it, could save him. That she’d lose her life doesn’t even factor in, it never has really, but she just doesn’t want to save him. She feels too hurt and heart-broken and betrayed and just lets the Titan attack.

 

But at that moment when the blade comes down on him, their eyes meet and in that moment he finds peace despite the horror of death and she finds regret and heartbreak because despite it all, she loves him and this was the biggest betrayal ever so she rushes to him.  
But it’s too late and no matter what she does or how many enemies she kills, it doesn’t make her feel better. Doesn’t take away the rage she feels at herself, the sorrow or pain of her loss.

And Athena is disappointed, her champions are better than that.  
So she is cursed. An eternity till she’s died a thousand times and saved a mortal’s life with each.  
And even when she hasn’t saved anyone’s life, she just comes back.  
But eachtime, regardless of whether life-saving happened or not, she loses something, like sight or worse, memory (memory will come back eventually but sometimes it takes decades).  
And she'll just get up from where she fell some time later, or if she’s like in bits and pieces, she’ll wake up in Ogygia and Calypso will tend to her till she can set out again and she just kind of washes up on some shore or another.  
But sometimes the thing she loses is herself, so she gets reborn and suffers the same sort of childhood, tragic and challenging, because that’s what made her a champion in the first place.

And she’ll fall in love many times, but she’ll rarely indulge in more than lust, because she doesn’t find herself worth it, deserving of another s love.  
Till he appears. A reincarnation. A gift her fellow champions say, those granted immortal afterlife in plains of pleasure and luxury for their deeds. A curse she believes, a reminder of why she suffers, of what she did.  
But maybe it’s both and neither, not till she makes a choice. Athena likes doing clever things like that.  
And he’s a demi-god, so he has quests and he doesn’t get why she refuses to be near him but he knows she’s got skills and demands she accompany him and she has no choice in that matter when Athena gives sign of agreement.

And this is where the story starts, all the previous parts you don't know yet. There's just this man discovering his fate as a demi-god and finding there are others like him and he has to go do the impossible with complete strangers who’re as magical as this new world he’s discovering.  
And he kind of regrets bringing that champion of Athena along, because all she does is question his every move, even if they all know it’s a sound one, and glare at happy cute things (well, not really but he wouldn’t put it past her to have some aversion to Happiness), but she’s amazingly handy, knows all these creatures they fight and not just in the encyclopedia way but in the ‘we go way back and once roasted a Minotaur over a campfire after annihilating his lair together’ way and if she can laugh and joke with others, like the nymph and other champion who may or may not be an actual (minor) God they have tagging along, then why not him?  
And he notices she gets this strange soft look when he compliments her, you know, right before she glares and threatens him with bodily harm if he doesn’t stop being a creep? And it gives him this weird feeling and he just wants to see her look like that more, but he doesn’t know why and besides there’s still this whole quest thing that in the end turns out to not be so important after all because they accidentally destroyed this stone tablet and unleashed this fury and it turns out that’s the real quest and suddenly champion/maybe a god is missing and the big bad knows Athena’s champion and now more gods have disappeared and he finds out that Big Bad is actually the Titan that killed him in a previous life.

And they hook up, him and the cursed lady, not him and the Titan ‘cause that’d be a little Stockholm Syndrome. But they hit it off and then she dies and forgets everything. Thenthe immortal champions warn him about her dying again, that she’s long overdue for a rebirth and btw she was your lover in that past life that ended with you having a permanent split personality which is kind of the sole reason for her suffering. And he’s in turmoil now because he doesn’t want to risk her rebirthing, but the Titan is hellbent on killing him good and proper and she knows enough that she’s supposed to save mortals (and demi-gods that have yet been gifted by the gods because hey, they can die and stay dead 5ever) so she'll risk her life to save his.

And it ends with the story narrowly avoiding the clicheist of cliches.  
He dies, history repeats itself because she froze in that crucial moment, remembered the last time it happened and froze. And she cries, prays to Athena, _'for all the lives I’ve saved, return this one to me and a thousand more lives I’ll die for.'_  
And Athena agrees.  
But at the same time he made a deal with Hades, let her rest in peace, lose her soul in the Fields of Asphodel and you’ll have a demi-god’s soul to toy with.  
And that was his quest, why he was born a demi-god in this life, to save her soul, to bring her peace. So he achieves hero status, but Hades’ deal was for a straight-up demi-god, as was Athena’s.  
And he’s brought back, but he can’t die because heroes can’t pass on with half a soul, Hades being the owner of part upon death.  
But he can’t die dead because Athena didn’t bring his whole soul back, as was the deal and until he is wholesome and alive, the champion doesn’t lose the so many hundreds of lives she’s saved nor have the new thousand added on top.

 

Epilogue is that they go on quests, the dying-but-not-really duo, and their sometimes god sometimes champion buddy (because they found the gods and freed them), looking for a way to end things well.  
And when she hits that thousandth life, Athena has no choice but to pass on immortality as was the ruling. Not that she minds.  
So neither can die now, they relocate to Elysium and sometimes visit Olympus with he’s-a-god-right-now companion and sometimes they quest or have young heroes-in-the-making breaking into the Underworld to meet them for their quests.

\--

Calypso - “Oh, that one looked painful. What happened?”  
Cursed champion - “Your concern would seem more genuine if you didn’t sound so eager to hear how I just died a gruesome death.”

Demi-god - “So how many more times you gotta... you know?”  
Cursed champion - “I don’t actually know. That’s the problem with amnesia, it doesn’t all come back. Or it does and then I forget again,”  
Demi-god - “..They call that Alzheimer these days.”

Demi-god - “Why are you telling me this now? Don’t I have enough on going on?”  
Athena’s Champion - “We would have told you sooner, but she threatened us. And it’s not like she’ll remember now.”  
Demi-god - “You’re immortal! What could she have done?”  
Athena’s Champion - “Quasi-immortals are _very_ resourceful.”

Demi-god - “So we’ve been risking our lives to find you and stop the world from dying and you’ve been sitting here playing bridge and Blind Man's Bluff?”  
Sometimes-a-God - “Morpheus had a pack of cards. It was either that or play I Spy.”


End file.
